Getting LaTeX into R Plots

Question

I would like to add LaTeX typesetting to elements of plots in R (e.g., the title, axis labels, annotations, etc.) using either the combination of base/lattice or with ggplot2.

Is there a way to get LaTeX into plots using these packages, and if so, how is it done? If not, are there additional packages needed to accomplish this.

For example, in Python matplotlib compiles LaTeX via the text.usetex packages as discussed here: http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/UsingTex

Is there a similar process by which such plots can be generated in R?

Answer 1

Here's one solution, from Frank Harrell:

http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/Main/PsFrag

Answer 2

You can generate tikz code from R: http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/tikzdevice/

Answer 3

As stolen from here, the following command correctly uses LaTeX to draw the title:

plot(1, main=expression(beta[1]))

See ?plotmath for more details.